Eat, drink and be merry. Add to the old maxim a variety of art, main stage entertainment and youth activities, and you have Art in the Vineyard 2000.
The 17th annual premiere art and wine festival of the Southern Willamette Valley is set to take place Jun 30 through July 2 at Alton Baker Park.
“Every year there is a new theme to help provide year round funding for the Maude Kerns Art Center,” event coordinator Karen Pavelec said.
This year’s theme is “Invite a Friend,” an invitation to the entire community to enjoy the festival and support the year-round programming that the Art Center provides.
Art in the Vineyard originally started in 1984 as a wine tasting accompanied by an art auction. In 1987 the Maude Kerns Art Center took over the event. It has been the center’s principal fund-raiser ever since.
One portion of the event will focus on “artists in the marketplace.” This will showcase artists whose talents include photography, jewelry, ceramics, textiles and wearable fibers.
“This year a huge outreach took place to get artists,” Pavelec said. “About 100 artists from all over Oregon and outside of Oregon are coming to take part in the festivities.”Many local artists from Eugene will also be on hand to show their support for their community.
Michael Chadd, a sculptor from Eugene who has been involved in art shows all over the country, is not only getting involved with the event as a participant this year but also as an advisor to help the show reach a higher quality of fine arts.
“I am trying to help them build the event by not making it a strictly musical event, but a serious art show, for real artists with fine arts and crafts,” Chadd said. “The name is ‘Art in the Vineyard,’ not music in the vineyard.”
One way of upping the art standards has been to judge the artists.
“A standard will be set and those artists who do not meet the base standard won’t get in,” Chadd said.
Next year an anonymous jury will view slides sent in by the artists, and the participants will be chosen accordingly.
“If only 35 artists meet the standard, then only 35 artists will be in the show,” Chadd said.
Chadd has participated in the event on and off for the past several years and said he will be involved this year with the hope that “it will be the starting point of a new era in ‘Art in the Vineyard.’
“The show will be showcasing quality art, so if you want to see good art in Eugene, come out and see it,” Chadd said. For one artist, Art in the Vineyard ended up being more than just an annual trip to Eugene. Nature photographer Adrienne Adam faced the jury to be in the show three years ago, got accepted and has participated ever since. With hopes of finding a medium between the 110 degree Leavenworth, Wash., summers and freezing winters, Adam moved to Eugene last November.
“I always thought that it was so nice down here, so the last time I was down I decided I might as well stop saying how nice it is and just move down here,” Adam said.
She has been taking photographs of nature for nine years now.
“I started with the scenic, and in the last four years I have focused on the details of the scene,” she said. “I take the scene and focus one part of it to capture its essence … the nucleus of the scene.”
Adam finds this detail in something like tree bark where there is geometry of nature.
“What makes my heart sing is the repetition of pattern and texture in nature,” she said.
As an artist, Adam says she has found Art in the Vineyard to be extremely successful for herself.
“And successfulness is not directly correlated with revenue,” Adam said. “It has to do with how people respond to my work — you can see it on their faces.”
During the show she will also showcase photographs she has taken on a recent trip to China.
“They contain a lot of pattern and texture but also aspects of human involvement, which is a new element for me to add,” Adam said.
Along with art for the home, the festival will also highlight garden art. Forty artists will be representing a wide variety of creations for the garden. Hand-crafted arbors and trellises, stone and metal sculpture, water fountains, stepping stones, birdhouses and plants are just a few examples of what can be expected in this realm of the show.
Children are also invited to enjoy a variety of different forms of entertainment.
“There is going to be a youth stage with storytelling, music and dancing as well as a youth art arena,” Pavelec said.
The arena will feature face painting, interactive clay activities and a friendship chain of silhouettes. Children under the age of 12 will be admitted free.
Main stage entertainment will begin Friday afternoon and go until Sunday night. Acts range from the popular Northwest band The Satin Love Orchestra, with their “disco with an edge sound,” to the West Coast Rhythm Kings with their jump swing blues to Henry Cooper’s blues guitars sounds to the Portland band Ponticello, which combines gypsy, bluegrass and Celtic flavors. Admission is $5 per day and $8 for all three days. Festivities will take place from 11:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.
For more information call the Maude Kerns Art Center at 345-1571 or visit www.atv2000.org